The Boy Who Would Be King
by VulcanChicks
Summary: It's August of 1985, and the minds of young scientists are being encouraged with an opportunity to accompany their parents to experience a day inside the walls of Aperture's underground facilities for Take Your Daughter to Work Day. Unbeknownst to them, their science fair projects aren't the only thing being constructed.
1. Doing Science

Chapter 1: Doing Science

Hurried footsteps pounded down the staircase of the cramped townhouse as Alexander struggled to gather the last of his belongings for the work day ahead. His tired blue eyes darted back and forth across the room as he muttered a mental checklist.

"Hat? On. Coat? Check. Adjustment notes…" There was a beat of silent panic before he remembered. He ran his fingers through his thinning straw-colored hair as he felt the thick wad of folded papers in his back pocket. "Accounted for. Son—"

"Ready to go, Papa!" squeaked a prepubescent voice whose accent mirrored his own.

Alexander let out a startled yelp as an excited pair of arms was flung around his legs from behind, causing his knees to buckle at the unexpected force. Twisting his torso, he could just barely see his son's bespectacled face staring up at him with eager crystal-blue eyes. He was a little short for a nine-year-old, and Alexander's own remarkable stalkiness only served to make the boy look even smaller in comparison.

"John," he groaned. "You're supposed to be in bed til your mum gets back." Molly, his wife, was due to return from her rendezvous with one of their Black Mesa insiders sometime that morning.

"She told me to look after you," the boy insisted, releasing him. "And you don't have to worry about me being all alone, because I'm going to work with you!"

He looked at John with mild confusion. "No, no, why would you—"

"Am too!" the boy huffed. "It's Take Your Child to Work Day."

"Take your... oh." He had completely forgotten. Well, not so much forgotten the event as discarded it. It was Take Your Daughter to Work Day, but John had been so distraught at the idea of being excluded that he had vowed to participate. Alexander hadn't taken him seriously and had simply assumed the boy would forget. Oh, how wrong he had been.

"—and I even got my own pair of goggles!" John announced, donning a pair of cheap, green-framed plastic sunglasses with star-shaped lenses. "Some protection is better than none," he recited. It was a phrase his dad often used around the house when the proper safety gear couldn't be found.

"John," said Alexander, anxiously checking his wristwatch. "This is a day for girls, not boys. We've already talked about this."

"I promise to be good, Papa. I've got my science stuff all ready to go, and I won't go catching cooties or anything," he insisted as he pulled an oversized play lab coat over his striped t-shirt. "Not even one."

"Are you sure you don't want to wait for your mum to come back? It'll only be a couple hours." He silently cursed his employers for not waiting until the school year had started. That would have invalidated the visit, but then again, that was specifically why they had set it to a late summer date.

"Mum would want me to go." His thick little brows were knitted almost as tightly as his arms were crossed.

Every tick of the clock was painfully audible. "Alright," his father sighed, taking his ring of keys from the dull, silver hook on the wall. "But you _cannot_ be upset if they would rather not play with you. Consider yourself warned." He scribbled a quick note to Molly and placed it on the end of the table where he knew she would see it.

John let out a tiny shriek of delight and pulled a magnifying glass from his coat pocket, waving it in the air. "Let's do some science!"


	2. Cooties

Chapter 2: Cooties

Although he was growing antsier by the second, John did his best to behave. This was without a doubt, the longest elevator ride he had ever been on. He had found it odd that the entrance to the great Aperture complex was nothing like he had imagined. There were no grand state-of-the-art buildings, sleek and shining in the dim Michigan sun. Rather, it was nothing more than a small parking plaza and an old building of modest size in which the elevator was housed.

This particular elevator was small, stuffy, and overall quite unwelcoming and ordinary, and the longer they were in it, the less real the air smelled. With every breath, the fragrance of the fresh-cut grass grew more and more distant.

Right when he felt he couldn't wait any longer, it stopped rather suddenly, and the doors opened into a room the size of his townhouse living room. It was completely empty aside from an odd but sturdy-looking steel door with no handles.

His father stepped up to it and swiped a card through a reader that was mounted on the wall beside it. John joined him as he typed a code into the keypad beneath it.

An automated voice came through a speaker above their heads. "Employee identified. Voice key required."

"Alexander Wheatley, technology development."

"Welcome back, Captain Crumpet." A series of metallic clicks went off, and the door opened outward.

He cracked a smile. "Molly." When she knew she was going to leave for a short business trip, it was always that same goofy title that she left to greet him at the gate. It had been so long since her last absence that he had almost forgotten.

Stifling a giggle, John gave his father's coat a light tug. "Do your friends at work know Mummy has the door call you that?"

"Let's keep that our little secret, yeah?" he chuckled, ruffling the boy's auburn mop of hair affectionately as he stepped through the entryway. "The lab boys have more important things to worry about today."

He nodded with a smile, trailing behind. He did his best to keep up, imitating Alexander's strides and his barely-noticeable slump.

"Papa, will I get to see your robots today?"

The response carried an air of anxious uncertainty. "It depends on how the tests go."

"Oh." He adjusted his glasses. "Will I get to see the turrets Mummy made?"

The door closed behind them, locking.

Alexander laughed uneasily. "How about we focus on getting you to the daycare so you can start doing your science?" It was all the encouragement John needed.

A short few minutes later, the pair stood at the entrance to the daycare. Alexander knelt down and peeled a nametag from the registry clipboard, placing it gently on John's chest. "Now remember, you promised to be good. So no fighting, no name-calling, no pinching other kids' supplies. You got me?"

The boy nodded fervently. "Promise!"

"And the most important thing of all," he continued, putting a hand on John's shoulder, "is that you're my little scientist, and I want you to have fun." He pulled him into a warm hug. "I'll see you in a few hours. We'll take lunch together, okay?"

Fondly burying his face into Alexander's chest, he smiled. "It's a deal."

"Hey, Wheatley!" barked a burly man coming down the hall. He looked a little older than Alexander, and his face was covered in a finely-cultivated, black stubble. "We've been looking all over for you, buddy. Folks are waiting for you in the main chamber, and they're itching to get started. Aside from Doug, that is. He's a no-show, just like every other big test day." He snorted. "Coward."

"Sorry, mate," he said, scrambling to his feet. "Er…" He looked at John. "You think you could give me a hand with him?"

The other man clapped him on the back. "Leave it to me, bucko. I'll give the little squirt a nice tour and everything."

"Thanks a million, Rick." He turned back to John. "This here's my buddy, Dr. Crowl from the testing department. He's going to finish getting you set up with your project. See you at lunch!" He dashed down the hall and out of sight, leaving John and Rick alone outside the bustling room.

"Don't you worry about your daddy, Johnny boy," said the scientist with a broad smile. "He's about to make us all _very_ proud."

The boy didn't respond, still a little uncertain of his new caretaker.

Rick bent over, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Listen, kid," he said, doing his best to look as unthreatening as possible, "you don't have to put up with all this 'doctor' business. We're gonna be pals, so you can just call me Rick. Deal?"

"Alright, Mister Rick," he said, a haze of reservation still hanging about him.

"That's the spirit! And I see you've already got yourself a lab coat, so you're ready to get crackin' on that project," observed Rick, leading him into the activity room.

A rounder woman in her mid-to-late thirties was standing at the front of a sea of little girls, busily setting up a display board. Attached to her breast pocket was a nametag that read "Charlotte" in bright, friendly letters.

"Here's a secret, buddy," the man whispered to John. "I peeked in on today's project, and it looks like everyone's gonna be making potato batteries."

John's eyes lit up. "Really? That's fantastic!"

"No it ain't! Anyone can make a potato battery," he scoffed. "You're _way_ better than that, kid. You're Alex and Molly's boy, and you, sir," he said, tapping John's nametag, "have the makings of something better."

"You really think so?" asked John, caught somewhere between pride and sheepishness.

"Sure do! And I know where they keep the _really_ cool stuff. How's about we build you a volcano?"

His jaw dropped. "We're allowed to do that?"

"Of course we can," Rick laughed. "Smoke, bubbling goo, explosions as far as the eye can see! Now that's our kind of project, dontcha think? Hang tight here, and I'll go grab it special for you, alright?" He was so caught up in his own excitement that he didn't give John a chance to respond before bolting off.

It was then that it occurred to him just how many girls there were and consequently, how very few boys. None, to be more precise. He watched uneasily as a few of them drew closer. They all appeared to be slightly younger than he was, which made the uncomfortably predatorial look in their eyes all the more unnerving. Quite honestly, it reminded him of a documentary his mother had watched with him where a pair of great white sharks converges on a wounded seal.

"What's a _boy_ doing here?" inquired a pudgy girl whose blonde curls bounced with every step. "Dontcha know it's a girls only day?"

"H-hullo," John squeaked. "I didn't mean to interfere with anything, honest!"

Another girl swiped the star-shaped sunglasses from his coat pocket. "What're these supposed to be?"

"Oi, gimme back my goggles! Some protection is better than none."

Shrill laughter erupted from a brunette with pigtails. "Those aren't goggles. Only a dumbbutt would make goggles like that."

"I'll bet those glasses are fake, too," chimed in a third, deftly plucking them from his face. "Just wears 'em to make himself look even _more_ like a nerd."

"Do not," he howled, swinging blindly at her as she pushed his face away. "I need those to see properly."

The girl held them to the side and well out of his reach. He fought back, regardless—though she greatly out muscled him at every turn—even going to far as to attempt to bite her fingers, but all he truly accomplished was frustrating himself to the point of tears.

"Girls, girls," chided Charlotte, pushing her way through the crowd. She pried the two of them apart. "If you don't all quiet down, nobody will be making their projects."

John took the opportunity to quickly reclaim both pairs of his spectacles. Running his fingers over the now-empty left lens frame of the starry pair, he stuffed them into the relative safety of one of the coat's side pockets rather than the breast to hide them from the others' view. He would look for the popped lens later, he told himself. The other pair, he returned to his nose, noting the fingerprints and smudges obstructing his vision with a boiling brew of outrage and annoyance.

By then, the girls had dispersed themselves among the various craft tables lining the room, hoisting themselves onto square stools in order to better engage with their workspaces. At a lonely edge of the room stood Rick, unfolding the legs of a small table, a shallow basin and a few bottles strewn at his feet.

"Hey, kiddo," he beckoned quietly with a guilty smile. "Got your supplies. If you're still interested, that is," he added quickly.

John approached him with a quiet nod.

"Sorry I left you to the pack. I knew they might be brats, but I never expected them to turn on you like that. I forgot how nasty little kids can get sometimes."

"It's alright, Mister Rick." His eyes were glued to the floor.

Rick sighed and scratched his cheek. "Still feel like making your volcano?"

The boy shrugged.

"C'mon, buddy," he encouraged, picking John up and placing him on the stool. "You and I are gonna make the biggest and best lava-spewing volcano anyone's ever seen!"

John's saddened features turned up into a smile as he took strips of newspaper from the pile on the table and squished them into the papier-mâché mix.

"There's a good boy," the scientist chortled as he patted his back. He paused. "I need to get back to work real soon, before the boss notices I'm away. She'll have my head if she does. Play nice, and most importantly, don't bother those girls, not even a little. You don't wanna cause yourself any more trouble."

John looked up at him with worried eyes. "So you're not coming back? I wanted you to see it when it's done."

"I'll step out in a half hour or so, as long as nobody needs me at the station. How's that sound?"

He nodded emphatically. "I won't let you down, Mister Rick. I'll set up some really amazing explosions just for you!"

Rick stepped back towards the door with a laugh. "Knock 'em dead, Johnny boy!"

John was already too immersed in his project to notice his companion's disappearance. His enthusiasm paid off quickly in the form of a hastily thrown together cone-shaped heap in the center of the table. Lumpy, lopsided, and oozing its excess fluids all over the small work station, it had been deemed ready to dry. John gave his creation a quick once-over before stepping back of the stool with a proud and satisfied nod. For the time being there was little else to do with it.

Cautiously looking out over the room, he decided to venture out of his safe zone and into the wild to observe the others as they worked. He hopped down from the stool and made his way down the rows of girls, relatively silent—save for a chatty few who John felt it would be best to avoid entirely—as they handled their potatoes and wires. He made certain to keep a good ways away from them, and did his best to not make eye contact. It wasn't the girls he was interested in, after all; it was their batteries.

They came in all imaginable forms, both vegetable and finished project. Rounded and lumpy, a solid and dirty brown with parts occasionally fading into a lively green, they painted the air with broad odorous stroked of slightly dampened earth, rich and thriving. Their assemblers paid John little mind, only pausing their work to throw him intimidating glances from which he recoiled.

In his honest opinion, none of the projects terribly resembled the image Charlotte had provided. The wires were ungainly and crooked, the nails inserted at odd angles, and though he knew the function would likely be unaffected, the aesthetic still rattled him. His volcano wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, he admitted to himself, but at least they were allowed variance as completely natural structures.

A particularly offensive one snared his attention. A train wreck you just can't look away from, his dad would've said. The wires were tangled, wrapped in a hungry mess around the vegetable case which bore almost a dozen cruel puncture wounds and was crowned with three nails that he suspected had been torn from a rotting board. To top it off, each was inserted into the potato at a different length. It made his skin crawl to see such a haphazard creation of the science his father held so dear.

It wasn't safe, what he was about to do, but there was much to be gained from the risk. He didn't recall seeing her in the mob from earlier, a great plus in his mind.

"Hullo," he chirped timidly, approaching the monstrosity's creator.

She turned quickly, her short, dark ponytail swishing behind her. Her serious slate eyes bored into his own, but he couldn't bring himself to break the trance of her gaze.

"What." The sharp snap of her voice caught him by surprise, sowing seeds of doubt into his plan.

He laughed nervously, scuffing his shoes on the tile floor. "I, uh, couldn't help but noticed that you looked like you were in a bit of a spot, a-and I thought you might want some help."

She coughed, shoving gravel deep into her voice. "If I wanted help, I woulda asked the lady. I dun need help from a boy."

"Please, just let me untangle some of your wires at least," he begged as he reached out for her project.

"I said I dun need yer help," she growled, shoving him away. "I've made, like, ten potato batteries this week an' I'm sick of them, so mind yer own beeswax!"

"C'mon, mate," he insisted. "Just that little bit, and I promise, no fingers crossed, to be out of your hair for good, alright?"

The girl responded with a swift punch to his face, landing her knuckles where his glasses met his nose. He was knocked to the ground, the bridge of his glasses now bearing a greater resemblance to the old wires on her potato. Blood burst forth from his nose like a geyser, and he yelped and covered his injury, trying to keep himself together. His resistance faded as welling tears quickly blurred his vision, threatening to pour out in a tidal wave. He curled up on his side, biting his lip and whimpering like a miserable cur. He hardly noticed the growing commotion, and the caretaker's voice was little more than a distant squawk.


	3. A God Among Men

Chapter 3: A God Among Men

Rick stood over John in the bathroom, his mouth folded into a tight grimace etched as he wiped blood from the boy's face with a damp paper towel.

"I'm sorry you got pulled from your work to look after me," said the boy quietly. Rick hadn't made it far before the incident occurred, so Charlotte had elected him for the cleanup crew.

"Keep your schnoz pinched," he replied gruffly. "It's not gonna clot if you let it drip."

His shoulders slumped in shame as he followed his instructions. "I'm sorry. I promise I wasn't trying to upset her. Honestly only wanted to give her a little help."

"Everyone's a critic, John. Sometimes you just gotta let people do what they're gonna do, even if it won't end well for them." He tossed the towel into the garbage and readied another, running it under cool water before handing it off. "Even grownups have trouble with it sometimes, believe me."

"Okay," he acquiesced with a sigh.

There was a pause before Rick continued. "I'm sure your old man appreciates the thought. With him, science ain't science unless you share what you know and what you're learning from it. It's all about teamwork."

John perked up a little.

"It's the only reason his project's gotten so far, working together."

"So you know what he's working on, then!" he exclaimed, eyes shining with curiosity.

"Yeah, I guess," he responded, his face falling. "How come?"

John pulled the bloody rag away from his nose and examined it before putting it back against his nostrils. "Papa doesn't tell me much about it. He says I wouldn't understand it, but he's never given me a chance to. So how could he know?"

"Well," said Rick slowly, offering him yet another clean one, "it's more that he's not allowed to talk about it. Caroline's orders. She's a tough boss."

John accepted it and threw the soiled one at the metal bin on the floor in imitation of the larger man, missing it by a good foot. "It must be pretty important then," he observed, plucking his poorly-aimed projectile from the ground and setting it into the garbage.

"Kid, you have no idea," replied Rick with a smile. "And to sweeten the deal, if today's test run is a success, the project'll practically be over. It might even earn him a few days off to spend with you and the missus!"

John was flabbergasted. "He _never_ gets days off!"

"Exactly. That's how big this is." He gently pulled John's tissue hand from his nose, looking it over with an approving nod before discarding that one as well. "But even if today doesn't go perfectly, you still oughta be proud of your dad's hard work. He and his team are pretty dang close to being worthy of being called heroes."

The intercom turned on with a muted click. "All unoccupied personnel, report to the main chamber _immediately_. Please remain calm."

The color drained from Rick's face. "Alright…" He swallowed thickly, looking down at John. "Hey, sport. Do me a favor and go back to the project room. Don't go anywhere else until one of us comes back for you, okay? Everything's gonna be okay." And with that, he vanished, leaving John by himself in the empty bathroom.

He stood quietly for a moment, his heart pounding in his ears as Rick's words echoed in his head. _Everything's gonna be okay_. He hadn't known him for very long, but if his dad trusted the scruffy scientist, so did he. However, trust didn't change the obvious worry in Rick's voice or assuage his own growing discontent. Something clearly wasn't right. Perhaps it had something to do with his father's project. He forced himself out the door and into the hall, legs quaking at the thought. He pushed on towards the project room. The man was a professional, so he knew what he was doing, he decided. If he did as he was told, everything would turn out fine. That's how it always worked.


	4. The Beast in the Lair

Chapter 4: The Beast in the Lair

The girls clung to one another, watching—some with wet and frightened eyes—as Charlotte left them in the room, locking the door behind her. It was for safety reasons, she had said, but it gave them little confidence. A few of the younger ones broke down, wailing in vain for their parents, which only increased the tension in the air. Even Heather, the troublemaker who had criticized John's star goggles and who had more recently taken it upon herself to graffiti her name on the poster for his project, was compelled to stop haphazardly splashing paint over the still-wet volcano.

John slipped quietly in through the back door, watching as fear swallowed the room and kept it in a strangling hold. He clung tight to Rick's promise. _Everything's gonna be okay. Everything's gonna be okay._ The prayer chant ran through his head in a loop as he sat against the wall, pulling the oversized lab coat securely around himself for comfort.

Elsewhere in the underground rat maze, unrest gathered in far greater quantities. Once focused to the point of indifference, the lab workers now zoomed about, frantically taking orders. Their eyes were glued to the angrily-writhing bundle of thick electrical cords and mechanized steel plates the color of wet snow. The thing hissed and bucked, extending its reach to dash itself against the roof as it babbled nonsense.

"Control Her!" someone yelled. "She'll destroy the personality construct!"

"It's too late. She's crushed it pretty good," another called.

As if on cue, the bundle jerked roughly, snapping itself like a whip and sending a chunk of metal that had once been a sphere sailing through the air. The chunky asteroid shape crashed to the ground, emitting an ear-piercing scream as pointed bits scraped the floor.

"Where's the backup plan? We need a backup plan," demanded a woman in a creased and dirty lab coat from an observation balcony. "We can't lose the chassis!"

The workers scrambled left and right to their work stations in an effort to regain a sense of order beneath the machine's feverish squall.

Alexander was bent over a control panel, a cold sweat dripping from his face. The project was on the edge of ruin. Everyone knew it, and the price for failure would be far more dire than a simple reprimanding from Caroline. Though the entire idea had come directly and with little detail from Cave Johnson, the ex-big man himself, the entire team knew it was playing with fire. He closed his eyes and mopped his forehead with his coat sleeve.

"Plan B is warming up for execution," announced someone on the floor, "but it's not fully developed. Joan, I don't know how safe it is."

"You should've thought of that before you all slacked on it," she barked from above. "Now's not the time for tip-toeing, and I've got a hell of a lot going on for me up here."

The chassis howled and screeched, sparks flying from its joints. "Stop! Let me be!" it crackled in a broken feminine voice. To an outsider who was ignorant enough to trust this monster, it sounded as if She had been crying until Her throat was raw. But the scientists knew better.

"We need to keep going," Joan continued firmly over the din. "We need volunteers for the security cores."

"The security cores?" sputtered Rick from a post on the wall. "You outta your mind? They're hardly more than prototypes!"

"Are you the project head?" she snapped in response. "I wouldn't be endangering anyone with this stupid idea if it weren't completely necessary. We're out of options, Crowl."

Alexander made his way to the row of modified human-length tables that lined the alcove that made up the entrance to the chamber. His eyes swept over the contraption in its entirety. There were safety restraints built into the reclining area's smooth surface, and right below the stiff-looking headrest was a small, raised surface that, through contact with the back of the neck, would serve as the connection between the subject and the mechanical vessel. At the head of each table lay a core-laden cradle, its precious cargo clamped securely in place. The processor stood proudly beside it all, its body lit up like a nighttime cityscape with eagerly-glowing buttons and numerous LED screens.

If all went well, the sizable metal spheres would serve to temporarily house the minds and the personalities of the people attached to them. In fact, the constructs could easily fall under the category of avatar, though there were very few inventions in this day and age that qualified. It was a unique concept that allowed their owners to connect with other technologies on a deeper and more intimate level, one that would provide them with greater control and understanding of their creations. Under these particular circumstances, such control would be used to reign the Disk Operating System back in to a manageable level.

It was abundantly clear that the team needed a little push, and although this method was unfathomably risky, it would undoubtedly be the most effective.

"Plug me in," Alexander shouted up to her, sitting on one of the tables. "I was heavily involved in the design, so I know these contraptions inside and out."

Biting his lip with a growl, Rick joined him. "If Al can do it, so can I. Besides," He looked out at the others, locking gazes with a few, "it's gotta be a team effort."

One faltered under the pressure of his stare, a disheveled young man whose eyes had developed tired bags long before they ought to. "I should've been an astronaut," he mumbled as he laid himself on one of the transfer beds.

Another took the one next to him. "There's got to be someone with a plan and a sense of leadership doing this. You can't be trusted to do this alone."

"Goddamn Craig," muttered Rick as he strapped his ankles securely to the table. "Had to be him, didn't it?"

Alexander laid back and patted his shoulder with a halfhearted smile. "Hang in there, mate. You can worry about your little lover's quarrel later."

"Preparing for transfer procedure." A couple lab assistants hastily set up vitals tracking on them.

The automated voice seemed far away. He knew the most likely outcome, and more than anything, he wished someone else would do it. But the reality, he knew, was that no one else _could_. He hadn't exaggerated his involvement in the cores' development. He had been there since the beginning and had contributed a great deal to their personality compatibility programming. Without him, the project wouldn't have made it as far as it had, so he knew exactly where its faults were. The cores themselves were complete; the weak link was the process by which they were linked to their hosts. It had never been given a thorough test run, making it likely unstable at best and at worst, irreversibly deadly. And even if by some miracle it were successful, chances were it was a one-way ticket, that he'd never quite make it back to see his family again. Though it had only been a couple days since he had last seen Molly, it felt like months, and his last interaction with his son had been brief and short of patience. It would be how young John would remember him: busy and curt. A stagnant pool of regret rose around him.

"Initiating transfer," confirmed the announcer, "in five, four, three, two—" Alexander's eyes fluttered shut, his mind surrendering to the great numbness.

The cores resting in the cradles above the heads of the beds began to twitch and spark, the lids of their optics creaking open a crack and allowing a dim glow to shine through. One of them let out a gush of air.

"She's warming up the neurotoxin!"

"Don't just stand there. Shut it off!"

"She's blocked off external overrides. She won't respond to a damn thing!"

"Doesn't it go any faster?"

"The machine's at full capacity. It wasn't ready for emergency use."

The argument dissipated into the din, its only remnants a fog of uncertainty and the fear that accompanies it. Dozens of eyes anxiously darted back and forth between the transfer equipment and the wild chassis.

"Transfer complete." The triumphant announcement cut through the noise, and for a split second, a taste of relief cleared the air.

Each of the cores' optics was now fully open, bright and blinking and looking around. The one above Alexander's head groaned and squinted. "Subdue the chassis," the core said in his voice, inner plates shifting to give the appearance of a quick nod. "We only have one shot at this, and we can't bungle it."

"The other personality constructs are hardly responsive," croaked the scientist at the station, her throat dry and her knees shaking. "Conscious, but unresponsive."

"That's not our top priority right now, Anne. I'll do my best to handle it alone," he retorted. "But I can't do that until I'm attached. Only put on the others if you're one hundred percent certain they can handle it."

She nodded. "Shut Her down!" she called up to Joan's perch.

"Are you nuts? That would mean resetting the whole system and putting us at least an hour behind on production. Do you really think that would go over well with Caroline?"

Anne found it nauseating how little she suddenly cared for safety as soon as production numbers were brought into question. But then again, her overseer's project was the chassis itself, not the technology that was supposed to modify it, so it was likely that she wasn't completely aware of exactly how dangerous this whole plan was.

Joan barked down to a station near the wall that was safe out of Her immediate reach. "Administer the shock!"

With the press of a button, the entire chassis was jerking and wailing as small bursts of white-hot electricity spiderwebbed across its joints, causing it to tense up and eventually release, leaving the machine a limp, curving mass dangling from the ceiling.

"We have to move fast. The nanobots are already hard at work on the repair," reported the person who had stunned Her.

Anne hurried to unfasten the Alexander core from his cradle. "We're keeping tabs on the others until they come to. How are you holding up?"

"Not terribly well, if I'm to be entirely honest with you," he confided, his voice already lacking some of its human depth. "We weren't at all ready for these kinds of circumstances."

"None of us were," she responded sympathetically.

"It's been a pleasure working with you." He sounded strained, his optic dusting over the chassis that now loomed lifelessly before them.

"The same."

There was a click and a muffled whirring as the Alexander core was locked into his sphere dock on the underside of one of Her plates. He shivered, and his insides shook tremendously. The sound of the chassis' internal motors grew stronger, and with a loud, drawn-in gasp, She sprung back to life as a wrathful god.

"What did you do to me?" She shrieked.

"Neurotoxin is back online, and preparedness levels are rising fast!"

"Disk Operating System," addressed the Alexander core as forcefully as he could, "cease and desist immediately. Your duty is to science and to the facility, and what you're doing is helping neither." He could feel the strength pulsating through the chassis' circuits, and frankly, it was terrifying. Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. She was furious. With everyone.

A dark laugh frothed up from within Her, twisted and garbled. "You're nothing more than a rodent commanding a hawk to stop its feeding." She slammed him against the wall, spraying the air with sparks and sending him into a fit of twitching. "Pathetic."

The core shuddered as the color bled from his vision until nothing but red with large, blinking warnings remained. "What if we try to settle this in a less violent manner, huh?" he crackled. "Specifically, using a method that doesn't get m-m-me killed. The others too, preferably."

"We're losing contact with the core. Alexander's fading."

"You hear that? You're a dead thing running, and everyone in here knows it," She snarled, jerking him around. "You'll never make it back, and your mate and offspring won't ever _augh—!_" The chassis cringed involuntarily, bucking and jumping as the core roared back to life.

"Oh, here's an idea! Why don't we build an anti-gravity space in the break room so the employees can have an zero-gravity bounce castle for their lunch break. Or we could go to the moon and build a test center there! What could possibly be more scientific than testing sciencey bits in space? And then we can breed our own strand of mutant space monkey virus and drop it down on Black Mesa! Might be a little difficult, what with space not really having gravity to drop with and all, but those are details we can work out later." Sparks flew from his hull; something inside him had clearly snapped.

"No, that's an _awful_ idea! No. No,nonoNO!" With one last furious swing of Her body, he was dislodged and thrown against the wall with a sickening crunch.

"Recover him," ordered Joan in a panicked tone as she rushed down to the main floor. "Reverse the transfer on all of them, stat! We _cannot_ lose them."

Anne went to him, scooping him up and rushing him back to the transfer station where the other personality constructs had recently come to full responsiveness.

"Hey there, pretty lady," purred a familiar gravelly tone. "Need a hand there? Pair of strong arms for that heavy burden o' yours?"

She gritted her teeth, ignoring him.

"He only acts that way because of pent-up sexual frustrations due to the recent work overload and his stubborn reluctance to pick up women at a bar. This is, in part, due to a fear he will wake up beside an extra-terrestrial who is also a part-time performer in a Dutch circus act."

"If I had feet, you little munchkin, there'd have been a boot up your ass _months_ ago," Rick's sphere snapped. "Bossy little lab rat."

"Wanna see it all. Walk on the moon, just like Buzz. He's my hero. Space hero. In space."

"Buzz Aldrin was actually a stranded Vulcan halfbreed who used the moon expedition to return to his people. In order to not seem suspicious, he swapped places with a flawed robotic replica of himself that occasionally slipped into the Pidgin language of the highlands of Papua New Guinea midsentence."

"Shut the chassis down. Caroline can get over the blip in production." It was only a second before it hung limp once more, Her single golden eye reduced to a dull background glow.

"They're failing, all of them!" said an assistant, his voice cracking as he watched the core volunteers' vital readings . "What do we do?"

A second looked on, fear lining the weathered creases in his brow and face. "Mackie's right. The equipment is malfunctioning as well."

"They need to have preservatives applied," commanded Joan, pushing them both out of the way. Tearing open the refrigerating cabinet between them, she produced a syringe from one of its drawers and flicked it in preparation. "We'll put them into storage until we figure out how to properly reverse this. It was _way_ too early to run this with human subjects," she admitted, mostly to herself. She injected the solution into Craig's shoulder and addressed the assistants. "Treat the other three. I'll send for storage pods."

"But—" Mackie started.

She grabbed the offender's wrist. "That wasn't a suggestion."

The intercom turned on with a crackle. "Neurotoxin generator warmup complete," chirped the automated announcer.

"Didn't we shut that down?" whimpered Mackie. "The whole thing?"

The only response she got was a loud wheeze as the chassis slowly rose up from its apparently-lifeless state and coiled, the malice in Her voice resounding viciously throughout the chamber. "Override a command and play dead. Is that really all it takes to fool you?" A putrid green mist poured from every vent in the room, tainting the air as it culminated into a toxic fog. "I hope you enjoyed thinking you had me, because things are about to get much, much worse." She paused for a moment before letting out a cruel laugh. "For you, of course."

For the next few minutes, the room drowned in terrified shouts and cries until all fell to silence. The only sound that remained was that of the transfer machine humming softly to itself among the corpses in the entryway. The emergency cores were quiet, their newly-acquired personalities having slipped away into a deep, protective slumber in all the chaos. Most peacefully rested Alexander, his body limp and unmoving on the table beside his companions'. His core lay unresponsive in its cradle, neither body nor construct more of a husk than the other.


	5. One by One

Chapter 5: One by One

In the activity room, the girls continued to hold fast to one another, a few unable to suppress their sobs. Though they couldn't say what, they knew something to be amiss. The discontent and uncertainty were palpable, footprints on a tracker's trail. In the midst of it all, John had left his lonely corner to join the larger group, his fear of what unknown disaster lay within the pit of Aperture having far overcome his fear of being assaulted. But instead of doing so, they had allowed him to cower alongside them without judgment. It was their common thread, and not even his sex could sway them otherwise.

There was a series of quick clicks followed by the slow and persistent creak of steel that caused John's breath to get snagged in his throat.

"The emergency airways have been activated. Your air supply will now be drawn from the surface," the computerized announcer said in its usual cheery tone over the intercom. "Your room is preparing to go mobile. Please be advised that grabbing onto an anchoring device will help prevent jostling, not guarantee it."

A few cries of "where's the science lady," "I want my mommy," and the like rose up from the crowd in protest.

"The outside looks sick," observed a particularly anxious girl named Lauren with both hands on the glass door through which their adult supervisor had disappeared. A couple others gathered around her, their curiosity piqued.

Suddenly, there was a pound on the glass, a single, manicured hand sticking to it, its blue-tinged flesh spasming and drawing the rest of the body forward. Just enough of the smog parted to offer the children a glimpse of their caretaker as she collapsed for the final time at the door, Her limbs were crumpled and her head twisted, mouth agape and eyes wide, glassy, and eternally fixed on her charges. A frothy bubble of spittle fell from her crooked jaw, pooling on the floor.

The ones watching screamed, and their glass prison began to move, drifting gently to its destination. Through the transparent walls, the children watched as room after room and hall after hall passed beneath them, each bearing the telltale green omen and its work.

"Charlotte French, Take Your Daughter to Work Day caretaker. Deceased." It was the announcer. "Aperture offers its deepest condolences. Tina Walski, programmer and mother to Take Your Daughter to Work Day participant Alix Walski. Aperture offers its deepest condolences…" The list continued, and with each new name, another face fell.

The traveling room jerked to a stop, knocking a few of its passengers to the floor.

"You have reached your destination. Thank you for your patience and for partnering with Aperture Laboratories, the wave of the future."

All was silent as the kids' swollen red eyes darted about the room, ready to react to the slightest unforeseen movement. One of them finally spoke up, startling the others. "Are we gonna be stuck in here forever?" Her voice trembled like a leaf rustling in the breeze. No one was willing to answer her and confirm what they all knew in their guts to be true.

"Hello," crooned a woman's voice. They couldn't place where it was coming from.

"Please come out," a freckled girl in a pale yellow skirt squeaked quickly.

"All in good time, but first—"

"Can you at least tell us your name?" she interrupted.

A growl rose in the mysterious voice. "That's really none of your business, and I suggest that you don't interrupt me again." Her tone softened. "I'd be willing to assume that you don't want to waste away in this room forever. So that's why, out of the goodness of my heart, I'm willing to strike a deal. My terms are simple: if you do what I ask, I'll let you go."

"You can't hold us here! The police will come for us, and they'll put you in jail where the bad people go!" said the freckled girl. There was a pregnant pause as the others waited for Her to lay down the punishment. They huddled close together.

"Alright." Her response caught them all of guard, even the questioner.

"Really?!" The girl could hardly contain her excitement.

"Since you were so insistent, I suppose I don't have much of a choice, do I?" One of the doors slid open, unbarring the way down a hall. "You want your freedom? Take it." There was a note of danger, of challenge in the AI's voice.

The girl scampered through the door and gave what remained of the corridor a quick glance before turning to face the others. "Come on," she urged them. "We gotta get outta here!"

They stared dumbly at her, a few shaking their heads.

"Fine," she huffed, taking off. "Scaredy babies."

"Hello?" called a young voice from a ways down. Something about it didn't sound right, like the person was speaking through a toy voice distorter.

"Are you okay? Did she let you out, too?"

"Could you come over here?"

She wandered closer. "Hello?" A confused frown creased her face as she looked around the corner. "Huh?"

"There you are." There was a sound of soft, mechanized expansion, followed by rapid-fire gunshots. The girl fell to the ground, lifeless before she could even utter a cry, her clothes soaked with spreading crimson splotches.

The others screamed and scrambled to get away from the door, tripping over each other as they went. The door slid shut, penning them in once more.

"Now, now. Do you really think I_ wanted _to kill her? It was a preventative measure," She assured them, "something I know that I won't have to worry about with the rest of you. You're all so well behaved when you want to be…"

Crushed beneath the weight of Her voice, their eyes swept over the room, desperate to locate their vicious captor.

"You will step into this room one at a time, and I'll run a few tests. Then I'll release you back into the wilds of the surface," She droned, opening the back door. This one was made of a frosted glass that hid nearly everything behind it from view. There was a pause. "Who would like to be the first volunteer?"

"I don't wanna get shot," whimpered a girl in front of John.

"I promised to let you go, and to do so means that letting you get shot is out of the question. My offer expires very soon, so it would be beneficial for you to keep up your end of it. Or have you changed your minds about the turrets?" She had slipped into a clearly-irritated tone, daring them to defy Her orders.

The girl who had spoken rose to her feet, shaking violently. "I'll do it," she said quickly.

"It's good to see you're willing to cooperate." Wherever She was, they knew She was smiling. "Did you know that admirable actions are usually rewarded, especially in the Sciences? We might be able to find you a suitable reward when it's all said and done, but I wouldn't get my hopes up."

All eyes were on her as she disappeared through the door which closed behind her, thus blocking her from view. They waited anxiously for several minutes without making so much as a peep, their voices all caught in their throats, half expecting another round of gunfire. This whole thing was becoming a very real game of Russian roulette, and the thought of losing made them squirm.

"What do we do if she gets shot for real?" managed one of them.

The door opened again, interrupting her thoughts. "Next subject." There was no trace of the first volunteer.

"But what happened to her?" pushed another, wiping her puffy eyes on her sleeve.

"She was accommodating and qualified. There's really nothing more you need to know. Now either this line keeps moving or I pump this room full of gas just like I did to the adults."

Another scampered wordlessly through the entryway, disappearing like the one before her. It continued in this way with very little resistance until only about half of them were left. In the meantime, the remaining handful had begun to talk. It was mostly happy things, fond memories of home and pets and family, the ideal topics to keep their minds occupied, lest they actually remember their dead guardians or the grave situation in which they now found themselves.

Beth, the girl who had stolen John's glasses, talked about Princess, her tuxedo cat; and Lauren, who had first noticed the gathering clouds of neurotoxin, told a story about her family's beach vacation. Katherine, whose relative quietness, bandaged knees, and serious face made her stand out from the others, apologized to John for having stood by as the others had surrounded him. John accepted her apology and fondly recalled watching a movie nestled between his drowsy parents on their old couch. His dark-ponytailed assailant remained completely silent of her own volition.

At some point however, the topic turned back to their fates. None cared to wager a guess as to what was happening behind the barrier, but they could all agree it wasn't good.

The door opened once more. "I'm ready for whoever's next."

Before he could stop himself, John found himself drawn to the gateway.

"No."

He halted in his tracks. "What?"

"You get to go last. Haven't you ever heard of the saying 'ladies first?'"

"Oh. Sorry." He shrunk back, and the silent girl with the dark ponytail took his place. He waited and waited as their numbers depleted until he was the very last one remaining.

Again, the ominous one-way door opened. "I've been expecting you. Come in."

He did as he was told, and the only exit was locked behind him. The room he now stood in was very white, bright and clean. It almost reminded him of a dentist office without any equipment, reclining chairs, or tanks of colorful tropical fish. In fact, the only thing to be seen was a small monitor suspended from the ceiling with static dancing across the screen.

"According to my reference file, your name is John."

He jumped back to attention. "Yes'm!"

"Tell me why you think you're here. Your little playmates have all had very imaginative theories."

"Honestly?" he asked, licking his lips. "Not a clue. But whatever the reason, it doesn't seem to be ending too terribly well for us."

"That answer isn't even worthy of a consolation prize." She remarked, unimpressed.

The boy swallowed thickly, shuffling his feet with an unstable effort. "You aren't by any chance going to tell me, are you?"

"I don't see any harm in doing so," responded the AI slowly. The source of Her voice seeming to drift about the room. John spun around to try and face it, but wherever it was, it remained far beyond his reach.

"This is a test, a sorting test, to be specific. For now, I'm simply making sure that you all end up where you belong."

"So you aren't letting us go…" he said slowly, the color draining from his face.

"I had to have some sort of bait to get you little animals to cooperate. You're all very precious raw materials, and I can't afford to waste you like I had to do with that first unfortunate marmot. You're no good to anyone dead, especially not me."

"What did you do to the others?" John demanded as his pounding heart lodged itself in his tightening throat.

"I told you this was a sorting event, didn't I? I'm finding the best among you to develop as test subjects. The most refined results come from the fittest participants. You could consider it donating your body to Science, if it makes you feel any better."

"Do you mean like animal product testing?" He had once seen a group of protestors with signs and pamphlets on the subject standing outside a supermarket.

"More like rats in a labyrinth. Even the best among you only has that much use," She sneered.

John's knees buckled, and he fell back. He felt sick to his stomach.

"Aren't you wondering what happened to the ones who were unfit to be test subjects?" On top of everything She had already done, the taunting and teasing was becoming unbearable. "No? That's alright. I'll tell you anyway. When any of your little girlfriends didn't make the cut, I extracted them. I tore their minds right out of their tiny, squirming bodies, and they shattered. They couldn't even handle a procedure that simple, so they broke to pieces. But it didn't stop there, John, oh no. I gathered those broken fragments, and I stuffed them away into my own creations, the turrets. You might know them better as the things that turned that loudmouth brat into a wheel of Swiss cheese. And to think, this whole thing was made possible by one of the side effects of the very process that your poor daddy helped to create. All I had to do was borrow a portion of it and modify it for the highest quality results. It was that easy."

She waited for him to speak, but he was completely paralyzed with fear. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed full of vile cotton as he sat pressed against the wall, one hand clutching his stomach, the other clamped over his mouth to hold back the bile.

"The addition of the personality shards was enough to give the turrets a vague sense of consciousness. At least enough," She continued coldly, "to assist with their decision-making. They're more intelligent now than any other modification could possibly have made them, and it's all thanks to throwing just a pinch of little girl into the mix. And because of this new supply, I won't ever run out. I'll be recycling their fragments on the turret redemption line until the globe stops turning." She paused, Her gleeful tone melting into seriousness. "But I don't need a pathetic specimen like you."

"Please don't kill me—!" he begged, his choked and dry sobs muffled by his palm.

The sound of a tongue clicking bounced off the walls. "It wouldn't be worth my effort. If I were to put you into a test chamber, you'd probably lose your balance and fall into an acid pit. The job would be done for me, and Science would _still_ suffer more losses than gains."

"Please don't kill me…"

"I heard you the first time," She said, annoyance clear in Her tone. "Bothersome sniveling aside, you're submitting quite well. Keep up the good work." A portion of the wall slid back and disappeared into the sides of the short passage it had opened. At the end lay a small room, no larger than an average kitchen, with a single uncomfortable-looking bed that was flush against the wall.

"Go to bed," She encouraged with a startlingly-gentle tone. "It's been a long day, and you'll need your rest for when you wake."

The boy pulled himself up with great difficulty and slowly stumbled in, tripping over his leaden feet. He drew himself into the bed, fighting the violent tremors running through his limbs, and unstrapped the sandals from his feet, allowing them to hit the floor with a hollow smack. He pulled the covers over his entire body before his dam burst. He had lost everything and gained only the knowledge that he was now bound to the whims of a titanic monstrosity of a creature whose identity remained almost completely unknown.

He cried until his eyes burned, to sickness and to sleep. The distress carried well into the young dreams that dotted the long road of slumber ahead, as lighthouses shone as beacons through a midnight storm.


	6. Let Kids be Kids

Chapter 6: Let Kids be Kids

John awoke stiff and sore, his head feeling bloated and weighing him down. He attempted to pull himself up but couldn't, slumping back with a groan. He recoiled at the tonal quality of his own voice. It was decidedly rough and gravelly and sounded overall quite unwell as if he had screamed himself hoarse before coming down with a powerful cold. For all of its strangeness, there was no real pain, not even a scratchiness that might indicate so much as a touch of illness.

He closed his eyes and pressed his palms into their sockets, trying unsuccessfully to rub the sleep away. He blinked a few times—though it didn't at all help to focus his vision—and stretched, which also felt a little odd. Again, not painful but odd. In fact, if he didn't know any better, he'd have thought that he was covered in an uncomfortably-snug second layer of skin. And was it just him or did his legs seem… longer?

Propping himself up on his elbows, he forced himself into a sitting position, and as he reached down for his legs, the sound of ripping fabric tore the air. A rush of cool air poured into his shoulder, seeping down into his back and chest, and upon inspection, John discovered that his shirt, now shrunken skin-tight, had given way at the seam.

"Have I _grown?_" He leapt in surprise when the intercom clicked on.

"Good morning, and welcome to the Enrichment Center's Extended Relaxation Units. You have been in suspension for 1,856 days."

John paused for a moment. "How many years is that?" he wondered aloud. His voice crackled like sudden static on a speaker, shooting up an octave before drifting back down like a maple seed riding an autumn breeze.

"A little more than five," stated a familiar feminine voice. "Did you enjoy your nap?"

His heart sank. "I thought you were a dream…"

"How disappointed you must be. But I must admit I'm impressed with how well you've grown under your unique circumstances. I thought you would have withered away like some of the others. Congratulations on making it through the first stage."

"So, uh, w-what now?" His voice trembled at the thought of how many of the girls from That Day remained.

"First," continued the AI without hesitation, "you're going to change into clothes that fit you. I couldn't care less about your comfort, but if you do any more growing in those, they'll cut off your circulation. Fortunately for you, allowing you to be mangled doesn't fit into any of my plans, regardless of how satisfying it would be."

A chute above the bed opened, dropping a large polo and an oversized pair of pants onto his head.

"With any luck, you'll do better than their previous owner. He wanted so badly to gain your father's approval, too," She added. "I _would_ give you a jumpsuit, but why bother? There were so many perfectly-good outfits lying around that I just had to keep a few. I was only thinking of you, honest."

He gulped but kept his mouth shut. More salt for his wound, that's all it was, and he knew it. He wouldn't give Her the gratification of his naked terror, not if he could help it. But whether it was his silence or his reaction that She desired, he could only guess.

The room lurched forward unexpectedly, startling him into keeping a death grip on the edges of the stiff mattress. He held his silence, fearful of both the destination and what it might change to should he speak up. What he had believed to be the walls of his cell fell away to reveal a smooth glass barrier, like majority of the activity room had been, that stood between him and the crawling depths below. Whimpering but remaining otherwise steadfast, he watched as his tiny room swayed past hundreds of others, albeit too quickly for him to really see what was going on.

At last, everything slowed, and his prison rose, coming to rest on a level consisting entirely of transparently-walled blocks identical to his own. He was surrounded on all sides by these units, and though he knew not how, the occupants of his neighboring cells all possessed a vaguely familiar quality like shadows in a smoky and distant dream.

"Now put them on." Her command brought him back to the present. "And before I have to hear this complaint again, allow me to address it: nobody's going to be watching you. As I hope you've noticed, they're all asleep, just as you were while the others got dressed. I'll leave you to it. Hopefully you can handle doing something that simple on your own."

"Got it," he responded solemnly.

The next few minutes were spent wrangling his shrunken attire. After a good deal of effort, he came to the realization that separating himself from it would be nigh impossible while keeping everything in one piece. He squirmed and twisted himself into the most distorted shapes he could manage until his contortionist act was rewarded by the satisfying pop and release of the fabric at his other shoulder. The newly-freed flesh throbbed, red and sore, still bearing its old captor's deep impression. John had never imagined pain to feel so good, so welcome.

The fresh hole was large enough to easily wiggle his hand about inside it, and although he lacked confidence in his physical prowess, he felt that he could bend it to his will. Hooking his fingers through the gap, and he pulled it until it gave away, tearing most of the arm away along with a small part of the front.

She waited patiently and silently while John molted, allowing Herself plenty of time to run the necessary diagnostics. If She had to wait on this painstaking process and his impossible slowness, She ought to at least make use of the precious time he was wasting.

At long last, he spoke up. "I did it," he announced, his volume drooping, "even though you didn't give me any underwear. I still did it."

"Congratulations. Now go back to sleep."

"What?'"

"Is your hearing failing prematurely, or are you simply too much of a moron to understand?" There was a small hiss and a vague smell of something gone sour that crept its way through the room.

John laid back down, accepting defeat. "Sorry," he mumbled, shutting his eyes. He was wide awake now and wanted to see what She was up to, what She was doing to the others as She drew them from their dark dreams. He would pretend to rest just long enough to convince Her, and then he would watch. She couldn't keep him in the dark forever.

As he repositioned himself to better be able to see the neighboring cellmates, he couldn't help but notice that his head felt considerably heavier. Impossible; he was fully conscious, determined to uncover Her secrets, unless… A thick fog settled over his mind, dragging him down, down, down into the molasses, sticky and slow and dense.

Against his will, he was overtaken by sleep in a matter of minutes, and thoughts of the girls who were taken on That Day and, if they were even still alive, how they were faring infiltrated his dreams.


	7. Daddy's Boy

Chapter 7: Daddy's Boy

John awoke with a start to the sound of the automated announcer running its wake-up message.

"Good morning, and welcome to the Enrichment Center's Extended Relaxation Chambers." Déjà vu. Nothing to be too worried about. "You have been in suspension for 3,603 days."

His chest tightened, and he shot upright, sending a sharp blast through his apparently-sore back. He winced. "Hello?" he called, looking about with a hand clenched to his chest. He was hardly aware of his own voice, now deeper than ever but not quite to his father's pitch. "Miss Robotlady?"

When there was no response, his heartbeat stumbled into a merciless rushing. He scrambled out of bed, his legs nearly giving way from disuse as he rushed to the glass walls, pounding his fists against them. The glass remained steadfast, completely unyielding to his blows. He struck it one final time but bounced off like a rubber ball on a smooth surface. Flipping his back to the wall, he slid down to the floor, the friction of his clothes squealing against it like a cleaning rag. He squeezed his knees to his chest, eyes panicked and watchful.

The dreams of his long sleep rushed back, inundating him with their essence. The girls, lost and grown as he was. Gunfire and the sickening thud of a bloody child. Dead scientists' bodies strewn about, twisted and discolored and bloated with decay. His dad scolding him for pushing himself on that dark-haired girl and her potato as his face melts away, leaving only bone and spotty patches of flesh around his wide, glassy eyes. More gunfire, in the distance at first, but growing closer and closer with every round of shots. Blam blam, blablablam. Closer. Blam blam, blablablam. Like a war cadence, ever steady, always _always_ nearer. Blam blam, blablablam. Hunted by his nightmare-alive, it can taste his heartbeat as it crashes against his ribs. Run while you can, it screams. Blam blam, BLABLABLAM!

"It's time for you to hold up your end of our bargain. Your specimen has been processed." Even fading in, Her matter-of-factly droning was enough to make his stomach lurch. "You're due for a transfer."

_Run while you can._

"To where?" The words were forced and strangled. He fought with every ounce of strength he had to hold himself together.

"You're shuffling off your mortal coil, as Hamlet would say. It's not quite as literal as Shakespeare wrote it, but the end results are similar enough. Robots can't really die, and dead people can't die any more than they already have. I would say being imprisoned in a mechanical shell isn't all that bad, but it wouldn't be fair to stretch the truth that much." She paused for a moment. Her tone had become unfamiliar near the end, somewhat pensive and disgruntled, he would say if he didn't know any better. "You have a lot of debt to pay off, about fifteen years' worth in fact. But don't worry, there's plenty of work to be done here at the facility."

_Run while you can._

"B-be a robot like you? I think I'll, uh, pass on that lovely offer, if it's all the same to you. I like this grownup body just fine, even if it's a little stubby or gangly in places." He laughed nervously. Where did all _that_ come from?

"Your memory must be a little foggy. Let me clear it for you."

The cell was lifted upwards, and it emerged from the floor into a new room that John had never seen. It was large, spacious, and reminiscent in that sense of the old care room from That Day. But unlike that of the care room, the floor of this one was littered with broken screens and remnants of crushed keyboards and the like. By the looks of it, whatever it had once been, someone didn't want anyone else to remember. But what really caught his eye was the crooked, pendulous mass handing dead center from the ceiling.

It twitched and twisted to face him, fixing its predatory yellow gaze on him. "It would've been very easy to quash a little cockroach like you," Her voice boomed from the swaying structure, Her impatience growing with every word, "but instead, I chose to nurture you in exchange for your obedience. And rebellion has never been rewarded." One of his cell walls retracted into the ground, and the familiar voice of his wake-up calls and the death announcements reported that less than a minute remained before Her gaseous weapon would be poised to kill.

_Run, run, run while you can!_

Death or eternal imprisonment within a cold, soulless shell. His heart lodged itself into his throat. "I don't want to die…" he choked.

The AI's voice curdled into a hideous purr, and the busy buzz of machinery slowed to a droning hum. "I had a feeling you'd see it my way."

Before he knew what was going on, a powerful steel claw was clamped around him and had him pinned like an insect on a display board to a metal slab in an alcove at the far end of the room. An odd machine whirred at his head, hot and processing, its empty cradles trembling at the force of its movement. The pointed chill of naked iron licked the back of his neck like an icy flame. This was the end, wasn't it?

"You always were a daddy's boy, weren't you?" She teased as she squeezed him tighter, threatening to crush his ribs. "But luckily for you, the two of you are going to be very close for a very long time." Another claw emerged from the ceiling, a round, gray object clamped between its pincers. "This," She said as She gave it a shake and brought it closer to Her prisoner, "is the place where he died, strip by strip of his mind torn from him until there wasn't even a spark of thought left in this metal ball. It was almost as if that last parts of him simply floated away through the air vents."

There was a short pause while the chassis shifted its focus and its piercing eye onto John's cowering form once more. "I would appreciate it if you didn't look at me like that. As much as I would've loved to take credit for his untimely demise, everything that happened to him was of his own doing. He volunteered himself for an experimental procedure, knowing full well it wasn't ready to be done, and he paid the price."

Eyes wide and stomach clenched, John struggled and thrashed against his bonds. "Please, cut it out. Leave me alone…" His weak objections had no effect on Her verbal assault.

"And do you know what I find particularly interesting? By the time the last of him disappeared, he couldn't remember _anything_. Not his job, not his wife, not who he was, not even you, his precious little burden. He was completely empty."

"You're lying!" he screamed at Her, his throat raw from the tears and mucus. "Papa would never forget us. Ever."

"Your blind loyalty is admirable," the AI chuckled as She roughly shoved the empty shell into the cradle above his head. "Endearing, but misguided. Either way, you won't have to worry about missing him anymore."

As the restraints closed around the metal sphere, the machine's internal spinning escalated into an ear-splitting wail. Something dug into the nape of his neck. Burning and alive, it tore a scream from his throat. He writhed and convulsed as a jolt of electricity crashed through the point of contact and spread throughout his entire body. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth as it pulsed through him again and again. The pungent odor of scorched flesh hung around him like a veil. With each new shock, he grew number, his extremities fading first. With each new throb of power, the pain welled up in the parts of him that retained enough ability to feel it. It was as if he were being repeatedly scraped over a bed of coral, the torturous sensation being drawn out longer and longer with each pass.

Then suddenly, light, just enough to make out a figure. Oh, God, this was it. The end. The true, final, forever end. But something was off. The figure was laying down, and the whole scene looked eerily familiar like some sort of lucid dream that was illuminated by a concentrated but dreamy blue glow. He opened his eyes, and panic swept over him.

He was seeing double, and not in the normal sense. Two separate images were overlaying each other, each fighting for control. Bile rose in his throat at its dizzying command.

"That's it. Let the hardware do its job," crooned the AI from above.

A particularly strong wave broke upon him, forcing a strained cry from his throat as the numbness spread through his limbs and back into his spine. He could feel the unnerving sensation of it trickling down into the left half of his skull. One of the images drained away like sand through a sieve, leaving only the overhead view with its azure tint. The claw released him, but for all his struggling, he could will nothing past his shoulders to move.

"Awe-inspiring what a handful of lab monkeys can accomplish for Science, isn't it?"

A new sense of consciousness cascaded over him, the former empty tingling sloughing itself off without explanation. He flexed his fingers, and instead, something on his sides responded, letting in the greater chill of the air and heightening his sense of unease and vulnerability. He undid whatever it was that he had done. Too much too soon. He'd figure it out later.

"Congratulations." He cringed, and a fresh and greater sense of dread awakened within him. Her presence was now stronger and far more terrible. "You're the most successful product of this procedure. It must feel good to know that the work I did while you were sleeping will slow your decay rate by close to ninety-seven percent. I'd give it a few years before you start to fade, but all in good time. I want you to remember everything as long as you can. It wouldn't be much fun if you forgot you were living in daddy's old clunker."

He couldn't hear Her. Information swarmed through John's head, drowning out all hope for thought; the most he could do was take it in and pray it stopped. The sudden connection to a piece of the vast Aperture database was nearly too much to bear. Unknown parts of him jerked and twitched at the blasts of bytes and aged commands, screaming at him to make it stop, lest they overload. The buzz of it all had grown in intensity and had risen in pitch to a feverish squeal that seared through his mind like a white-hot brand.

The blue of his new view bled into a low-energy crimson that boiled ominous declarations of "DANGER" to the surface. Similar but smaller marks scrawled their way beneath them. _Processors overloading. Reboot sequence imminent,_ it warned. But what was there to do about it? His panic escalated until it was shot down by a final and powerful jolt that set him into a mental tailspin. _Emergency shutdown. Emergency shutdown. Emergency—_

All went dark, and for the time being, life ceased to exist.


	8. The Machine

Chapter 8: The Machine

A pale green light played before his eyes, spelling out its glad tidings of _reboot initiated_ as John's world came back into focus. Smashed computer parts, a cavernous space, the imposing and constant hum of machinery at work. His location hadn't changed. However, something struck him as odd. The view was good, but it all felt a little higher than before. The walls swayed as he felt himself grow a tad dizzy. Was he on the ceiling? Was that even possible? _No,_ he thought, _that would be ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that I'll look down right now to prove it._ That couldn't hurt, he decided. The alternative was so improbable that it didn't really matter anyway, right? Cautiously creaking an eye open—his only one, he was soon to realize—he turned his gaze downward.

"Aaah! Too high. _Definitely_ too high. Stuck on the ceiling. I'm _stuck_ on the bloody ceiling!" Under normal circumstances, he would've been appalled at the very thought of an oath, even one so light, rolling off his now-proverbial lips. That had been his father's thing to drop the occasional curse, most often in a moment of frustration or after a difficult day. But as these circumstances were far from usual, he hardly noticed. _I'll just close my eyes and concentrate on somewhere else,_ he thought._ Maybe, maybe if I think hard enough, I'll go somewhere else._

_It's an optic,_ corrected a mechanical voice in his head. _To refer to it as an "eye" would be frivolous, foolish, human, and therefore inferior._

No, no, no, _no._ First unexplained adventures as Spiderman, then hearing voices that weren't actually there? His panic was interrupted by yet another unwelcome sound.

"It's comforting to see that you've made it this far. Welcome back to your own personal slice of Android Hell." The strength and more distinguished confidence of Her voice resonated poorly with him, wrenching his robot guts in a most unpleasant fashion, and Her gleeful tone did nothing to suggest any form of reassurance for him.

"I really don't want any trouble," sputtered John fearfully, quailing under Her haunting stare.

"That's what I like to hear. Now the question is what's the most painful and most upsetting job that I can chain you to?" She swayed thoughtfully from Her perch. "You could be put into manufacturing, where you would be surrounded by robots forever, always reminded you're not really one of them. But then you'd probably find some way to disrupt production with your stupidity, so I suppose we should leave that job to the overseer's replicas. Consistency is important."

A small whimper escaped him. As unpleasant as manufacturing might be, he was sure that it would be preferable to whatever else She would cook up for him.

"Ah, there it is. I've got it now," She drawled. "You'll be on people patrol, so to speak. It's simple enough, doing rounds to observe the test subjects while they're in stasis. Not even a complete moron such as yourself could mess it up."

The door behind him opened to reveal a steel beam of relatively small size that was mounted on the ceiling tiles. Its path stretched in both directions, one end tucking itself carefully around the corner and the other extending towards the boy-now-robot-ball in a way that was both inviting and ominous. Perhaps this was how he was staying in the air.

"Go on," She urged, though John knew he didn't have much of a choice. "And here's a tip: that a little voice in your head knows what it's talking about. You ought to practice your listening skills."

He willed with all his might that he would back up, and slowly, he did. What lay around the corner was a mystery for certain, but even the most unpleasant of surprises was, in his opinion, a better option than staying too close to Her, a sitting duck to a hungry predator waiting patiently in the reeds.

"There are about a hundred different safety protocols to prevent a fatal malfunction in any of the preservation areas, so should a horrific accident occur in which the entire system were to fail, it'd up to you to save every last one of them." Her pitch rose mockingly. "'Help us, moronic metal ball; you're our only hope.'"

He continued to slide blindly backwards on the guiderail. He hadn't the slightest clue as to where he was going, but as long as it was away from here, away from Her, he couldn't care less.

As he had hoped, the voice in his head came to his assistance. _Continue down the path you are on. Facing forward is advised, as failure to do so might result in your permanent termination._

With some hesitation, he obeyed. Below him, the floor fell away between work rooms, providing an overwhelming but otherwise spectacular view of the bare walls and beams and catwalks and nearly-eternal pits which formed the facility's overarching skeletal structure. Dark and disheveled, they appeared to be largely abandoned in comparison to the other parts he was more familiar with. The one exception to this observation was the occasional chaotic scattering of plastic water jugs and empty tin cans on landings and catwalks and between broken doors and the exposed mechanical entrails of the walls whose protective tiles had been torn away. He inquired about their origin, but the voice simply attributed it to a rat problem before urgently pressing onward.

As many of these technological wastelands as he encountered on his journey, his presence in them was always tantalizingly brief. His imagination ran wild with ideas at what else lay within the vast expanses, cloaking his uncertainties with temporary awe and desire to discover. Maybe the voice was right. Maybe it _was_ a rat problem, only the rats were escaped lab experiments that had grown to the size of German shepherds, no, people, and they had to develop a taste for canned beans to survive! He continued the fantasy for the remainder of the travel, burying himself as deeply as he was able in a subconscious hope that it could somehow protect him in the coming eternal work period.

The next few months passed slowly, monotonously, with each day resembling the previous with remarkable precision. Each day was spent running the track around and through the spacious chamber in which several hundred test subjects remained in suspension. He monitored their vital readings anxiously, grateful for their consistent regularity. He sought out the girls from That Day, and one by one, he found them. Or at least they resembled them, and he wouldn't allow himself to believe otherwise. Jessica, Beth, Alix, and Heather had all been transferred from their tin cell rooms to even smaller closed containers, that bore an eerie resemblance to caskets. Apparently, they were being set aside for later testing. As for Lauren and Katherine, he could find no trace, leaving him with nothing more than expectations of the very worst. Killed by Her gun-toting monstrosities (which he had since learned were called "turrets"), extracted and shoved into turrets, didn't make it past the first stage, the possibilities were almost endless.

But there was another, one whom he had somehow forgotten until he was confronted with a new addition to his otherwise static collection of relaxation chambers. With her dark hair, now long and deeper in hue, and her soft but sturdy features, there was no question as to who she was. Her eyebrows were thick and dark as ever, and her fists, uncurled and limp though they were, remained in his head as he most vividly remembered them: solid, unforgiving, and connecting intimately with his young face. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but the pain remained ever fresh, a unique aspect of his robot ability to recall everything in HD.

He realized he knew next to nothing about her, despite their encounter. Not her name, not who had brought her in as a participant on That Day, not even why he hadn't seen her up until this point. Perhaps he had simply overlooked her. Regardless, he took it upon herself to become educated about her as he had done with the others.

"Hey, mate," he chirped to the informant in his mind "any chance you could read her file for me? We, uh, know each other, I guess you could say." He knew he could just think it could still get a response, but he felt less lonely when he talked.

_Name: Chell [REDACTED]. Age: twenty-four. Daughter of Greg Eavert. Adopted,_ it recited flatly. _She was recently moved from a suspension storage unit._

"But _why?_" he pressed. "Why now?"

_She was recently bumped to the top of the testing sequence by administration. Cave Johnson who has not accessed the system in nineteen y-y-years—_ The rest of the statement melted into static. _Further inquiry is unadvised and may result in your permanent termination._

He asked no more and slowly continued onwards to the rest of his rounds. Within the next few days, she disappeared, leaving behind the empty of the cell. According to the voice, she had been moved to the test chambers, and while he didn't quite understand what all that entailed, he worried for her. After all, it was a product of Her design.

Doing rounds only provided so much entertainment, so there came a point where John began to explore the facility between assignments. Little by little, he learned of service routes and abandoned shafts, of mysterious backways and the facility care units, careful to follow the guidelines of the poorly-disguised threats that his mental guide frequently supplied.

The purpose of his expeditions was threefold. On one level, they provided him thrill and a spirit of adventure at the prospect of a new personal discovery as well as a sense of pride and accomplishment when he did stumble across something. Secondly, they distracted him. His never-ending exposure to the sleeping test subjects did exactly what She intended for it to do. It upset and worried him to dwell on the fact that in some distant and horrific way, he was responsible for the well-being of every last one of them. Thirdly and most importantly, it made him feel safer.

In Aperture, everything was connected. The general rule, he had noted, was that if it was capable of free motion, it was a part of the great web of presence. It was like an enormous map of the entire facility, and everything that met the mobility requirement was being tracked and was able to use it to track others. In short, John could more or less sense everything, including Her as She waited in Her centrally-located nest, observing Her Science as it was brought to rotten fruition. His explorations usually pushed outward, putting distance between them and thus weakening Her presence in his mind. But there would always come a time where the voice would instruct him to go no further and return to his duties. Each time he set out, he dreaded hearing the summons, but each time, all it took was being reminded of his guardianship and he would turn back.

Not long after the dark-haired woman vanished, another disappearance occurred, this one stranger than the previous. Without warning and without explanation, Her presence vanished from his radar. It was as if She had never even been there. The dark-haired woman however, didn't return, even in Her absence. Not at first, anyway. Eventually, her relaxation unit was returned to its place among John's lifeless crowd, her body stowed safely inside. Her uniform was stained with sweat and streaks of crusted blood, which was unacceptable for storage standards, so he had her changed.

He watched, enthralled by the details of her organic form. Amazing that something so complex could be engineered completely on its own. His mental informant had told him all about humans' basic functions in order that he be optimally-equipped for his job as their caretaker. They grew from almost nothing at an alarming rate, forming their own parts of their own volition. They could even fix themselves at will, though the process took far too long in his opinion. Regardless, that level of self-reliance was something he could only dream of. When equipment got damaged, something else had to fix it. How wonderful it must be to be able to manage your own repairs! As he daydreamed of such independence, he couldn't help but notice the discolored and puckering lines that slashed their way across her skin. Scar tissue, he assumed. But for having been repaired, the affected areas didn't look natural at all. Such shoddy work could only be the result of a serious injury. It sent a shiver through his wiring to think about their origin.

Without Her rigid guidelines, the facility's once-bustling production lines slowed to a sluggish trickle, and the entire facility seemed more at ease, as if it had let out a pent-up sigh of relief. Its fiendish master was gone. It didn't matter where She now was, only that wherever it was wasn't here.

Weeks passed—or was it months? a year?—and the same dull, uneventful rounds bled into each other until one day was completely indistinguishable from another, aided by his mental guide's incessant nagging. _Do not disengage from your management rail. Ignore the scribblings on the wall. Attempting to access such-and-such a room is ill-advised. Failure to comply will result in your permanent termination._ It was the same thing almost every day, and the only way to hush it was to behave as it said. More robot, less human. That's what it wanted. Anything less, and it would correct and berate him until his brain went numb.

Once the stupor set in, it never truly left. It made it hard to think, hard to plan, hard to remember even the most important details. Was that room with the graffiti to the right or the left? Or was it the next turn? He'd once had a human body, he was fairly certain. He had a mother and a father, and they were wonderful (why would they not be?) and worked as, as… It had something to do with Aperture, but what exactly? Something about robots and a faraway business rival. Well it didn't matter what their jobs were, did it? There weren't any people here doing them anymore, so they probably got new ones elsewhere. It was better this way. Robots were far better workers, after all.

A powerful sense of indifference permeated his being, and although it once would've been a source of great alarm, he found that it took very little effort to convince himself otherwise. In fact, it no longer bothered him to consider the horrific second-hand nature of his core. The longer he was employed, the less he found he cared for the sleeping beings. They had become a job, a chore, and nothing else. It didn't matter that Lauren and Katherine had likely been shot full of holes and left to bleed out on the stainless workfloors; they had probably been mouthy when She had questioned them. It didn't matter that the dark-haired mystery girl had gone missing and returned with remnants of painful-looking wounds; she had… done something to him, though he couldn't remember what. All he remembered was that she was strong, strong enough to take care of herself, in his opinion. But you know what? _It didn't really matter._ That was the beauty of it all.

Soon, impassiveness became forgetfulness, and forgetfulness became ignorance. For all he knew, he had always been, and would therefore always be, just another facility bot, specifically one who had been landed with the deepest of misfortunes to be trapped here, bound to his senseless job of tending senseless, vulgar, smelly humans until the voice or some other authoritative power said otherwise. What remained of his old life was his old knowledge was one scrap and one scrap only, a greeting he would receive upon waking from one of his seldom sleep mode naps. _Identity confirmed. Welcome back, ID sphere Wheatley._

In the weeks to come, disaster would strike. A great catastrophe would trigger a perfect system failure that would cut off the life support to almost every test subject in the relaxation vault. What he wouldn't know was that the failure had been the result of the reserve power draining to critical levels. It had been eating away at the protective protocols ever since Her disappearance. The rooms would be shut down individually, the least-fit test subjects being the first to be condemned to die.

He would awaken from a short slumber, surrounded by death and chaos, a familiar feeling that would stir a long-lost well within him. In his panic, he would seek help from an unlikely partner, a sleeping human whose long, dark hair and determined eyes were reminiscent of something vague and distant, ghosts of some sort of dream. Of his selection, he would only be able to say one thing, that some lost little voice in his head told him that she would know what to do because she was strong, powerful in ways that he couldn't fathom. But until then, he would go about his business, just another bot in the facility. Always had been, always will be.


End file.
